Author's note: So people are either going to love this chapter, or they'll hate it. Either way, it is what it is!
Chapter 27: Mortality
Crimson wings beat powerfully, buffeting the ground with gusts of wind as they slowed down their owner's descent. The figure landed lightly on its clawed feet. Red lightning pulsed through him, and his form changed. Where once there had been a demon, now stood a silver-haired man clad in his trademark red jacket.
"So this is the Land of Darkness. Huh. Could use a bit of landscaping, don't you think?"
He turned and looked at the woman behind him, who rode on the back of a gigantic black birdlike Grimm. As her mount touched down, she jumped off it, landing a few feet away from Dante. Slowly, she approached him.
"The land is covered in an ancient corruption. It's the last vestiges of the one who ruled over this place long ago", she explained. "That's why it is the way it is. It's also why this is the birthing place of the Grimm."
"The one who ruled over this place?" asked Dante. "You mean before Salem?"
Cinder nodded.
"Now I'm curious. Who was this guy?"
The dark-haired woman hesitated.
"It's… best if you were to hear that from my mistress," she said.
Dante didn't sense any subterfuge here: she really did simply seem eager for the explanations to come from higher up. He shrugged. Turning, he looked at the lone building in sight, a towering dark structure.
"Well, at least I won't need an address to find her," he quipped.
Cinder did not reply. Once upon a time, she may have at least rolled her eyes in annoyance. She'd met plenty of people who considered themselves funny. However, she had seen this particular man's true form, so she saw the joke in a different light. It was part of a facade, part of the mask that hid the terrifying being that lay within, always watching, always waiting to be released. Never before had she been so thankful that someone was able to lighten the mood with a joke.
Cinder.
A telepathic voice, a familiar one, reached her.
Mistress?
Invite our guest inside. Be sure to treat him well.
Yes, Mistress.
She began to walk forward.
"This way. Salem is expecting you."
Dante kept pace next to her, taking in the scenery as he went. He could sense the creatures all around, hiding in the shadows. While humans couldn't see in near perfect darkness, he could. One of the more amusing things about his line of work was looking at creatures who thought they were hidden out of sight, stalking you, unaware that you could see them just fine. Honestly, if most of these creatures weren't absolute bloodthirsty beasts who would rip you to pieces if they could, they'd be fairly cute. Still, the constant staring did start to annoy after a while. Without so much as looking in their direction, he flipped Ebony out and fired a round, deliberately avoiding hitting them by mere millimetres. Immediately, the Grimm scattered.
"Can I interest you all in some pest control? Normally, we don't do this, but given the scale of the job, the Devil May Cry could offer you a discount…" he said.
Cinder started slightly.
"The… Devil May Cry?" she repeated, not knowing what he was talking about, but afraid to come off as rude.
"It's our agency," said Dante. "We take care of problems of the supernatural variety. Ghouls, ghosts, demons, Grimm, vengeful deities, manifestations of abstract concepts, bitter exes-"
"Bitter exes?" said Cinder.
"Well maybe not bitter exes, but everything else, yeah."
"Why would you even place them in the same category," muttered Cinder, then shook her head. "Wait, that's not the point. Your day job is… hunting demons?"
"Yep!" said Dante, grinning proudly. "And I'll have you know, I'm the best there is at it."
"You're… a demon who hunts demons," said Cinder, not believing the words coming out of her own mouth.
"Funny how that works out, huh?" said Dante, not missing a beat. "After all, you're a human who's killing other humans."
"I… it's not that simple," said Cinder, looking away.
"It never is," agreed Dante.
Cinder continued to walk as she spoke.
"You don't understand," she muttered. "There's no way you could. You don't know what it's like to be weak… to struggle every moment of you life… to have to kill simply to eat, simply to survive."
Dante shook his head.
He'd heard such words before, from the many mercenaries he'd known back on Earth. For a moment, an image flashed in his mind, of himself in younger days, Rebellion in hand as he struggled to fight off Sins, even as his stomach rumbled with hunger, and every muscle felt like lead from lack of sleep.
"I won't tell you any different," he said.
She glanced at him.
It made sense to her. Why would a demon have any problems with killing humans? To him, it must be little more than an amusing story. There wasn't any reason for him to be anything other than indifferent. Yet, for whatever reason, she'd almost been expecting him to tell her that she was wrong, that there was another way, a better way. Deep inside, a part of her said that she'd even been hoping so.
"We are in agreement then," she said.
"Of course not," said Dante. "I understand the need to kill in order to survive. But that doesn't mean I agree with it."
Cinder stopped, and turned to face him, her fists clenched.
"That doesn't make any sense. You know it's true: that we all kill to protect ourselves, to protect our own lives. You would do it too. Then how can you deny it?"
"Understanding that just because you gotta do it, doesn't make it right. Isn't that what it means to be human?"
As Cinder came to a stop, Dante walked past her. They had arrived at the castle's throne room, and he sensed a presence behind the doors he was facing. Going up to them, he knocked a few times.
"Enter", said a voice from within.
Pushing the doors open, he walked in.
Inside, at the other end of the room, he saw a woman seated on a throne. As he entered, she rose and began to walk towards him. Tall and slender, she had sharp yet delicate features and moved gracefully. It was hard to deny that she was beautiful. But despite all the charms her appearance held for the human mind, there were clear signs that some power had influenced her, until it was questionable how much of her was still human. Her skin was bone white, and black veins were visible under it, spreading all over her body. A black gemstone shone on her forehead. The sclera of her eyes were dark, while the irises were red. Dante could sense power vaguely reminiscent of demons in her, though it wasn't quite demonic in nature. If he had to describe it, he would say it felt like an offshoot of demonic power, or perhaps something descendent from it.
Heh. Interesting.
"So you are the one known as Dante," she said.
"In the flesh," replied the Devil Hunter.
The woman approached him with slow, careful steps, appraising him with her eyes. When she was a few feet away from him, she stopped, and nodded.
"Yes. Yes, I see now. You are definitely him. There's no doubt about it."
Cinder entered the throne room at this moment, just in time to hear her next words.
"I wanted to see with my own eyes. There's no mistaking it: you are a demon."
Dante chuckled wryly.
"Everyone keeps saying that."
"Are they not right?"
"Only half."
Salem's eyes widened and glinted for a second.
"... I see. That explains much. You have some human weakness in you. It's why this planet is still intact."
Dante, who had heard the same reasoning more times than he could count by now, didn't even bother refuting her.
"You say that like you're not human," he pointed out.
"That is because I'm not," she replied.
"Aren't you?"
There was no mocking undertone in his voice. It was a sincere question. Perhaps because she hadn't been expecting such a thing from an entity like him, she answered with equal honesty, and a touch of sadness.
"No. Not anymore, anyway."
She looked out of the window, at the broken moon whose fragments still shone in the night sky.
Dante laughed lightly, and she turned to look at him. Strangely, she didn't feel any anger. Now that she was in front of him, the idea of feeling rage towards him was laughable. To someone like him, it was meaningless: an ant may as well feel anger towards a giant. Instead, she found herself smiling wryly.
"My suffering is amusing to you?" she asked.
He shook his head.
"No. It's just, you didn't deny that you were once human. And that's good enough for me."
She stared at him, not understanding.
"You see," he explained. "That humanity doesn't ever fade away. Not entirely. Somewhere inside, it's still around."
Salem's eyes tightened, and she clenched her fists.
"Nonsense. Such a thing doesn't exist anymore."
"Are you that desperate to be rid of it?"
She glared at him.
"I didn't discard it," she snapped. "It was taken from me."
Dante's gaze sharpened.
"Your humanity was taken from you? By who?"
Salem smiled. She had not come into this encounter with a plan. By now, her experiences had taught her this: all plans and strategies would fail. When faced with this being, they would prove laughably insufficient. Therefore, attempting to come up with one was a waste of time. Instead, she would take this encounter exactly as it came, showing who and what she truly was. That was her only hope.
But she had managed to gain his interest.
And so, there was a chance.
She may yet be able to make a deal with the devil.
"Tell me, Dante. Do you enjoy stories?"
"Sometimes."
"Then let me tell you one. Please, sit down. This will take a while."
Dante shrugged and took a seat at the long table. Noting that he had not chosen to sit at the head, Salem avoided doing so as well, instead sitting across from him.
"Have you ever wondered why the moon here is broken?" she asked.
"Wasn't it because Piccolo destroyed it with a beam cannon?" he quipped.
Salem laughed. While the exact meaning of the reference escaped her, she got the spirit of the joke.
"No," she replied. "But close enough: it was destroyed by a god on his way out of this world."
"A god, huh?"
"One of two. They ruled this planet long ago," she explained.
She definitely had Dante's interest now. He knew this wasn't just a story: it was the actual history of this world. Just as well, he preferred hearing it face to face over reading it from a book.
"So why'd they leave?" he asked.
"Humanity had… disappointed them," she answered, her voice delicate, but tinged with venom.
"And by humanity, you mean you?"
She smiled once more. It was always more fun telling a story to someone who paid attention.
"They didn't like one bit that I was willing to go against their rules," she said.
"That so? What did you do?"
"Well, I was a young girl at the time. An innocent maiden. Well, perhaps not so innocent. I fell in love with a man. A great hero. You see, my father kept me caged up in a tower. I couldn't get out on my own, so I found ways to send messages, so that one day, someone would come, and break me out of my prison."
"You're talking about the book you wrote. Nice book, by the way. Would have sold well in my world."
"The very same," said Salem. She'd gotten used to conversing with him while going along with his quips. "I won't lie: I was desperate. I didn't care who got me out, so long as someone did."
"No pretence, huh? I like that."
"Out of the many who answered the call, I did not think there would be a single one I would ever see as anything more than a tool. But, as it turned out, I was wrong."
"You met your prince charming."
"He was a great hero. I was a princess in need of rescuing. It is a tired old tale, but it does ring true in this case. I fell in love with him. We went away together, and for a while, we were happy."
Dante was reminded a little of the many times he had heard his own father's story.
"So? What went wrong?"
"In the end, he was mortal, as was I. He died: even our magic could not save him. I'd always known that would be the case. Humanity back then all possessed magic. But there were still things we couldn't do. Overwrite the laws of life and death, for one. That was beyond my power. So I went to the god of light, and pleaded with him to restore my lover's life."
"Old man didn't like that one bit, huh?"
"No, he did not. He explained why. Something about natural law, and the order of things, and the balance of life and death."
"Sounds important."
"I'm sure it was, but I didn't care. I simply wanted him back, and I was willing to do anything for it. So I went to the god of darkness."
"And how'd that work out?"
"He proved more agreeable than his brother, at first. He brought him back to life. But his brother found out about it soon enough."
She paused slightly, then continued.
"Not only did they take his life away again, they cursed me. Took away my ability to die. Because I hadn't respected the importance of death, I could never have it. I could never have the release of an end. I'd forever walk the world, in unending suffering."
Dante remained silent for a while.
"What happened then?"
"I fought back. Or at least, I tried to." She laughed bitterly. "Can a mortal fight a god? Back then, I thought so. I enlisted all those I could. Convinced them that the gods were tyrants. Convinced them to march against the twins. It went about as well as you can imagine. We didn't just lose. We were wiped out. All of humanity. They called this world a Remnant of what it used to be, and left, breaking the moon along the way."
"You survived though."
"I jumped into the birthing pit. This place used to be the dark twin's domain. The Grimm? Those are just his creations. The unlife to balance life. The destruction to balance creation. The birthing pit is where they come from. I thought, if I jumped into the source, I might destroy myself. But no, it didn't kill me. It only changed me."
She spread her arms wide.
"This is what I became. I was twisted. The energies in that pit flowed into me. I was no longer the same, and I could never be again. But I still remember the me I used to be. Call it a blessing, or a curse. But I can never forget."
Dante's face was unreadable.
She had been honest during the entire telling, both in what she said, and in her feelings. But there was no way to know what he thought about any of it.
"That isn't all, is it?" he said finally.
"... Centuries passed by. Eventually, humans began to appear again. Perhaps a few humans had survived the original destruction of the race, and had finally managed to repopulate to a significant extent. Perhaps the new humans evolved like all life does. Or perhaps the gods simply saw fit to create humans again. But the new humans, the same humans that walk Remnant now, were not born with magic. They were shorter-lived too. The Grimm killed those who got too close. I simply existed, not caring one way or another. Until he returned."
"Your hero?"
Salem's gaze flicked towards Dante for a moment in surprise. She hadn't expected him to catch on that quickly.
"Yes. He came back. At the time, I didn't question it. I was simply happy to have him back. And for a while, that is how it was. We lived together, in peace."
"... It didn't last, did it?"
"The gods hadn't sent him back for my sake. And neither had he come back for mine. No, he was here for them, to do their work. To 'guide humanity', 'make them worthy' of the twins again."
She paused again for a moment.
"When I found out, I was blinded with rage. Enough that I killed our daughters. But they had inherited the magic their father possessed. And so, even though they died, their power, and something of their spirit continues on, passed on to other women. As for him… well, perhaps fittingly, he too cannot die. Each time his vessel is destroyed, he finds another, so that he can continue his mission. When it is time, he will use the Relics the gods left here to summon them, so that humanity can be judged once more."
Once more, she could not read Dante's face.
The devil hunter remained silent for a while, before speaking.
"And what about you? What is it you want?"
Salem's heart sped up. Was this it? Was she on the verge of gaining him as an ally?
"I… want to destroy all that is precious to the gods. If it serves to spite them, then good. If it brings them back here so that I can hurt them, even better. One way or another, I will have my revenge."
She looked at him, eager to see some sign that he found that a good enough cause, one he would support. He met her gaze.
When he remained silent, she decided to find out. She had already told him everything. There was no point to pretence here.
"What will it be then, Dante? Will you help me? Will you lend me your power, and erase this world from existence?"
"I'll help you."
[Ghost in the Shell 2nd Gig OST: I Do]
Cinder saw him moving, and began to move herself, but already knew she wouldn't be fast enough, even with half the power of a Maiden. Powerless to do anything, she watched as the devil hunter's arm stretched out, and his hand touched Salem's head.
"NOOOOO!"
Screaming, she launched herself forward.
Even as she approached, crimson light flashed all around Dante's body.
Countless ten-pointed stars appeared, adorned with the oldest of languages under Heaven, the demonic runes.
The seals between worlds broke open, as power that could not reside in the realm of humans entered it.
Mid-flight, Cinder sank to the ground. She couldn't move, she could barely breathe. Her eyes widened.
Dante was still in his human form, but from the forearm onwards, the hand touching Salem's head had transformed. As though warping the fabric of existence itself, human bone, muscle and skin transitioned into demonic sinew. Jagged scales that seemed made of rock covered the limb. Underneath them, visible between them was the glow of sheer hellfire. A hand the colour of volcanic rock laid upon Salem's head, its fingers long and clawed.
For a moment, Cinder saw the witch's eyes wide with horror, until, to her surprise, the fear faded, replaced by calm acceptance.
Salem had not been able to react.
Before she knew it, his hand had reached out.
And then, she sensed it once more: the immense and indescribable power of a true demon.
His arm transformed. Where once there had been human flesh, there was the hand of a devil. Fear took hold of her. It wasn't as if she hadn't predicted this possibility. It was a risk. A risk she had to take. A devil on Remnant wasn't someone she could ignore, nor someone she could bypass. One way or another, their paths would collide, and so, she'd chosen to take the risk, and meet him head-on in an all-or-nothing play. If she succeeded, she would gain an undefeatable ally. If she failed, well… then it was all over.
And it seemed she had failed.
Of course. He was a demon. Even if half of him was a human, there was an entire half that was not. To him, humans were a lowly existence, worth no more than trash. And however changed she might be, ultimately, she was human. Her life held no value, no meaning to him. She had played with fire, and now, she would be burned. She could sense the power thrumming within that hand: it was a power the twins couldn't have dreamed of.
Yes, this hand could kill her.
There wasn't an immortality in existence powerful enough to protect her from it.
As that realisation sunk in, fear gripped her. Her death would be painful. What few tales of demons had been told in Remnant spoke of their brutality, their violence, and it was legendary.
So this is how it ends?
After all the pain and death I've caused, this is how I die.
It wasn't as bad as it could have been.
No, come to think of it, hadn't the twins' desire been for her to live forever? To live until she grew mad, and begged for forgiveness? Begged for death?
This was far better.
Not only had she found death, she had found death at the hands of a being who had nothing to do with the gods, who was their very antithesis.
Yes, this was good.
In fact, she couldn't ask for better.
It wouldn't be Ozma or one of his lapdog hunters who would kill her, nor any human. It would be a being whose purpose for existence was to end lives. A glorious manifestation of sheer destruction.
Dante's words sunk in.
"I'll help you."
Ah, I see now.
He wasn't going to give her the balm.
Instead, he was going to solve her problem at the root, and give her what she truly wanted.
Death.
A sense of peace washed over her, and she closed her eyes.
She felt the demonic power enter her. Any moment now, she would probably spontaneously combust.
Instead, she felt the power touch something else within her.
Something that had always been there, yet, something she had never been conscious of. She recognised it as magic, but not her own.
Before she could react in any way, the demonic power enclosed it completely, and squeezed, crushing it. Within a moment, it had snuffed the magic out of existence.
As soon as it was gone, she felt something within her change.
Wait a second, did I-
Before she could wonder any further about it, the demonic power grabbed hold of something else, something she was conscious of.
The corruption from the birthing pools.
To her complete astonishment, she felt it being pulled out of her.
Im…possible…
Connected as she was to Dante, from a brief instant, she got a glimpse into his soul, just as he was looking into hers. Where she had expected to find darkness, she found something else.
A single tear rolled down her cheek.
Ah, I understand now.
When Dante pulled his hand back, strands of darkness trailed behind it, leaving Salem's being. He tore the last of the corruption out of her. The witch felt a great weight lifted off her, and found herself breathing heavily in relief.
Dante looked at the sphere of darkness in the palm of his hand.
"Heh. If only I hadn't seen this gimmick a hundred times before. What's with all these wannabe gods and their obsession with dark gooey stuff?"
Without another word, he manifested one of Balrog's gauntlets on his hand, and summoned the flames of the Fire Hell. The last remnants of the corruption were completely and utterly obliterated from existence.
"Well, that takes care of that."
Salem stared straight ahead. Not daring to believe it, she slowly lifted one hand up, almost afraid to look at it. Managing to overcome her fear, she finally glanced at it, and nearly fell backwards out of shock.
The pale, bone-like colour was gone, replaced by the healthy blush of living skin. Gone were the veins that pulsed corrupted unliving matter through her. She could no longer feel it inside her.
And above all that, she felt one more thing. Something she had gained back.
She was mortal now.
She looked at Dante. His arm had returned to its normal state again.
"W-why…?"
The Legendary Devil Hunter looked out the window at the broken moon.
"I have no idea if there's a God or gods or not. But I do know one thing: if there's someone worth serving, then that someone definitely isn't some self-righteous jerkoff."
He began to walk away, but stopped when Salem cried out.
"What… what am I supposed to do now?"
"If you want to die, go ahead. I won't stop you. But I suggest you try to live."